One Compelling Example to Renew Your Church Domain Name Today

According to this news story, Hope Community Church in Dover, N.H., learned a hard lesson about domain name registration and renewals.

Evidentally, their church Web site domain registration lapsed and a porn site bought (or squated) their domain name!

My own experience with this: I had a similar issue with this at a previous church. One of our members said that when they went to Google and typed in our name, the first entry went to a similar site as Hope’s.

After some investigation, I found out that the site was previously owned by an architectural firm that had done work for us several years ago. To make a long story short, they had let their domain name go, as they were converting to a new one and this new site had “squated” on their site and took some of the old information and left it on there.

One of the items on there was our church name. Thus, it was turning up on Google and causing problems. After tracking down the squaters and emailing them to take our name off, they did. A messy situation remedied for us … for the architectural firm got a black eye out of the deal because their clients and potential clients were finding their old site.

OUCH!

Make sure your church domain name is registered for multiple years, not just one. And make yourself a reminder to renew it two years prior to its expiration. Go check out when your domain name registration expires at Network Solutions or the place you registered it RIGHT NOW.
Contrary to popular opinion, you don’t own a domain name for life … technically, you’re renting it.

November 17, 2006 · Filed Under Church Marketing, Web Site Design

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